Steal, page 5
“And you didn’t have to lie.”
“Is that really supposed to make me feel better?”
I slouched in my seat. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe this was a mistake,” I said. “The more I think about it, it’s not as if I really can’t do this on my own.”
“Seriously? A psychology professor using reverse psychology?”
“Yeah. Is it working?”
“No, not even a little,” she said. “But remind me again how much von Oehson is donating to Harlem Legal House.”
“Two million dollars.”
Elizabeth nodded slowly. That was working much better for her. “Yeah. That’s a lot of money,” she said.
“Does that mean you’re in?”
“It means I haven’t said no yet.”
“So you’re a maybe.”
“It depends.”
“On what?”
“For instance, you still haven’t told me where we’re going. Where does this genius plan of yours begin?” she asked.
“Where else, but at the beginning. The day Carter von Oehson disappeared, so did his girlfriend for hire,” I said.
“You mean, the prostitute.”
“I was trying to be politically correct.”
“So says the man who just kidnapped me.”
“Fine. That’s where we’re going,” I said. “You and I are off to see a prostitute.”
“Great,” said Elizabeth. “My morning keeps getting better and better.”
CHAPTER 15
When we rolled up to the corner of East 65th Street and Third Avenue on the Upper East Side, it occurred to both of us that prostitute was perhaps not the right term after all. A gentleman’s escort seemed more accurate. An expensive one, at that.
There are apartment buildings in the city, and there are luxury apartment buildings. This was definitely the latter. Even the doorman’s suit was nicer than mine.
At the security desk, a guy in a guard’s uniform gave us a look that all but screamed retired cop. Elizabeth did with him what I couldn’t do. Flash a badge.
On the twenty-eighth floor we stepped out of the elevator and into a large foyer. A vase on the pedestal table in the center of the space held an arrangement of freshly cut flowers, mostly hyacinths. Their violet-blue color matched the vertical stripes of the wallpaper lining the hallway.
The address Julian had given me brought us to the last door on the right. A corner apartment. Again, I let Elizabeth lead the way. Not only did she have the badge, she had the better job title for the task at hand.
Within seconds of her knocking we heard footsteps approaching on the other side of the door. Elizabeth didn’t wait to be asked who we were.
“I’m agent Elizabeth Needham,” she said, before holding up her badge in front of the peephole. “Are you Paulina?”
“Yes,” came her voice.
“Could you please open the door? We need to speak with you.”
There was a pause. Pauses are fine. Just so long as they’re not followed by footsteps walking away from the door. Or, worse, running. Neither was the case. A dead bolt snapped, and like that we were standing in front of a tall and slender blonde wearing a pair of sweatpants and a white T-shirt. Her hair was pulled back, she had no makeup on, and the heavy-framed glasses she was wearing looked straight out of Revenge of the Nerds. Still, she was absolutely, positively stunning.
“Come in,” she said.
She had the Russian accent of someone who’d clearly been working over the years to get rid of it. Detectable, but only barely. She didn’t inquire who I was, which meant Elizabeth didn’t have to introduce me. Perfect.
I’d gone over the questioning back in the limo. I would never ask Elizabeth to follow a script, just her instincts, but there was one particular question I needed posed to Paulina Zernivik, and it had to come before any others.
“Have you heard from Carter von Oehson since his suicide?”
I watched carefully as Paulina processed the implications of what Elizabeth was asking her. I wasn’t so much waiting for the answer—at least not the one she’d put into words. I all but expected her to pretend she didn’t know who Carter was.
No, what mattered was the answer she’d give before even opening her mouth. The body language. The squint of recognition on hearing Carter’s name. A sudden tensing of the shoulders when the brain, in a fit of panic, tells her to lie. All the unmistakable signs that she was hiding something about Carter’s disappearance.
C’mon, Paulina, show me what you’ve got…
Only her eyes didn’t narrow. Her shoulders actually relaxed. Paulina Zernivik had nothing to reveal—except relief. The kind you can’t fake.
“Oh, thank God,” she said.
CHAPTER 16
One, she knew Carter. That was clear.
Two, she hadn’t heard from him since he disappeared. Also clear.
“He’s still alive, isn’t he? That’s what you’re saying,” she said. “He didn’t kill himself.”
“We hope he’s still alive. We don’t know for sure,” I said. “But, yes, there’s some evidence to suggest he didn’t die by suicide.”
Paulina nodded as if vindicated. “I knew it. I just knew it.”
“Which is why we’re here,” I said. “To talk about what else you might know.”
She tugged on her white T-shirt, her eyes darting back and forth at Elizabeth and me. “How did you find me?” she asked.
Well, you see, it’s quite simple. It turns out the National Security Agency’s global spy satellite network compiles more than one hundred petabytes of data every six months, more than the total data stored on all of Facebook’s servers, and the NSA has to offload it periodically to an undisclosed data center so the network doesn’t throttle itself. This network is the virtual equivalent of Fort Knox, using 256-bit encryption, but the transfer is only 64 bit because by that point the data is deemed innocuous with no national security implications and is essentially nothing more than Google Maps, albeit featuring a minute-by-minute rendering of every inch of the planet with the kind of clarity that goes well beyond what any map app could ever offer. For instance, the vehicle identification number on the black Range Rover HSE registered to your name and address, Paulina, that you’ve been driving to the von Oehson home in Darien, Connecticut (latitude and longitude N 41°3’4”, W 73°28’45”), for a hell of a lot of Tuesday afternoons. Of course, 64-bit encryption is nothing to sneeze at in terms of data security unless you happen to be one of the world’s foremost—if not the most—gifted hackers. God bless you, Julian.
That was a little lengthy for an explanation, so I tightened it up a smidge for Paulina. “We found you,” I said. “That’s all that matters.”
“You need to be straight with us about Carter von Oehson,” said Elizabeth. “You want to help us find him, don’t you? Bring him home safe?”
“I do. Believe me, I want to. But there are certain things I can’t tell you,” she said.
I took that as my cue to be blunt. “Like his paying you for sex?”
Elizabeth shot me a look that said, Jeez, you really do need my help, Professor Tactless. “What he means, Paulina, is that we don’t care about your profession,” she explained. “That’s not why we’re here.”
“You were possibly the last person to see Carter before he disappeared,” I said. “We need to know more about the time you spent with him this past Tuesday afternoon. Did he act any different or say anything strange, something you might have picked up on?”
“No,” said Paulina.
“No? Nothing at all?” I asked. “Take a minute to think it over. There had to have been something.”
She didn’t take a minute. She didn’t need one. “I wasn’t at his parents’ house last Tuesday. I wasn’t with him.”
“Where were you?” asked Elizabeth.
“I was here in my apartment.”
“Is that something you can prove?”
“I’m telling you,” said Paulina. “I wasn’t there.”
“And I’m asking you,” said Elizabeth. “Can you prove it?”
“What more do you want?” She balled her hands into fists, frustrated. Angry. “I wasn’t with him. It wasn’t me!”
I looked at Elizabeth. Elizabeth looked right back. Paulina looked at both of us, realizing what she’d just revealed. It wasn’t me.
“Shit,” she said.
CHAPTER 17
“If it wasn’t you at the house, then who was it?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” she lied. Her shoulders had tensed up so much her T-shirt looked as if it were on a hanger.
“Try again,” I said.
She started walking away. “I need to sit down.”
That was a good sign. People always sit for confession.
Paulina’s living room looked like a page out of the Restoration Hardware catalogue. There were big pillows on top of giant sofas, set off by a huge glass coffee table with assorted knickknacks arranged just so.
She sat. We all sat. Elizabeth and I said nothing. We only stared, waiting her out. Eventually Paulina started talking.
“I was supposed to be with Carter last Tuesday,” she said.
“What happened?” I asked.
“He canceled. Or at least I thought he did,” she said. “I got a text about two hours beforehand.” She beat us to the punch. “And, yes, I saved it.”
She reached for her cell in her sweatpants, bringing up the text. We knew she wasn’t about to hand over her phone, so Elizabeth and I got up to read it.
Betty it’s C. Friend’s
phone. Dropped smine,
shattered. Gotta get new
asap so need to cancel
today. Cool?
“Wait. Who’s Betty?” I asked, reading the text again.
“That’s the name I use with him,” she said. “I’m Betty.”
“Does he know your real name?” asked Elizabeth.
“It’s funny, every repeat client wants to know my real name at some point. They think it makes them different, like we have a real connection or something. Carter never asked me. Not once,” she said.
“Had he ever canceled on you before?” I asked.
She smiled slightly, as if I’d hit on something. “Never.”
I sat down again, but Elizabeth remained standing. She was pacing. She was hooked. “The excuse about his phone breaking sure made it convenient for someone else to have sent that text,” she said.
“Yes, but someone who also had to know who Betty was,” I said. I pointed at Paulina. “As well as your cell number and when you saw Carter each week.”
“That was another thing,” said Paulina. “Something else that had me thinking he actually did send the text. Carter never used his name. It was always just C when he texted me. Apparently a lot of the kids on campus call him C Money.”
“Subtle,” said Elizabeth.
“So maybe Carter sent the text, maybe he didn’t,” I said. “The question is, what did you do about it?”
“What do you mean?” asked Paulina.
“He canceled. Or at least I thought he did,” I said, repeating back what she’d first told us. “That means you had to have done something about it. You followed up in some way.”
Again, Elizabeth and I just stared at Paulina. “I drove out to Darien,” she said finally.
“I get it,” said Elizabeth. “You were suspicious. You thought maybe you were losing a good client.”
“Exactly,” she said.
“And?” asked Elizabeth.
“And I saw his BMW in the driveway when I got there. So I parked a little down the street from the house and waited. Then I saw her,” she said. “She pulled up in a red Jaguar, got out, and went inside.”
“Then what?” I asked.
Paulina shrugged. “Then I went home. What was I supposed to do? I mean, I thought about waiting and confronting him afterward, but that’s something a girlfriend would do. I wasn’t his girlfriend.”
“Did you at least get a good look at the other woman?” asked Elizabeth.
“She was tall. Long hair. Light brown, I think. Maybe not so light, I don’t know. That’s about it,” she said. “Oh, and she was wearing a black fur coat.”
“Any chance she works for the same person you work for?” I asked.
“I wouldn’t know.”
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t know who I work for,” she said.
Paulina—Betty, to Carter—was so matter-of-fact about it that I didn’t immediately react the way I was supposed to react. Utter disbelief. She doesn’t know who she works for?
“But even if I did know, I’d never tell you,” she continued. “You could arrest me, try to lock me up forever. I still wouldn’t tell you.”
“Why not?” I asked.
“Because they’d kill me, that’s why.”
CHAPTER 18
Elizabeth didn’t say a single word to me the entire way down in the elevator, nor while we walked back through the lobby of Paulina’s apartment building and out the revolving doors.
But I knew what was coming. This was the calm before the storm. Hurricane Lizzie. Sure enough, the moment we hit the sidewalk…
“What the hell was that?” she asked, throwing her arms up in the air. “I mean, for crying out loud, what the hell was it?”
“Can I explain?”
“No. I don’t want to hear it. I know what it’s going to be. You’re going to give me some fancy-pants explanation that sounds a lot smarter than it really is.”
“Did you really just say fancy pants?”
“Shut up, I’m serious,” she said. “You rope me into this thing and then you go ahead and do that. Why? Why did you let her off the hook?”
“That’s not what I did.”
“That’s exactly what you did. She would’ve told us more, and instead you just thanked her for her time.”
“That’s called keeping her on the hook. We’re going to need that girl’s help, which means we need her on our side, trusting us.”
“What’s with all this we stuff?” she said, air quotes around the we. “That was you in there, acting on your own. And as for me, I already told you I haven’t made up my mind yet on getting involved.”
I looked at her, my best sideways glare. Really? Don’t even pretend you’re not hooked, Lizzie. I saw you in there. This case is so in your wheelhouse.
Only she wasn’t looking back at me. I followed her eyeline. It was laser focused on the side view mirror of a Ford Escort parked along the curb. Something had caught her attention. “What is it?” I asked.
“My six,” she said. “Right shoulder. The guy on the phone.”
I glanced over her right shoulder, spotting the guy. “I see him,” I said. “What about him?”
“He’s talking on the phone, right?”
“Yeah?”
“So how come he’s not talking? He hasn’t said a word since we’ve been out here.”
I glanced again at the guy. He was standing about twenty yards away. Long brown overcoat, phone to his ear. Maybe he was just listening to whoever was on the other end of the line. That would explain why his lips weren’t moving. But it didn’t account for his eyes.
For a split second they locked on to mine. He didn’t flinch. He didn’t panic. But how quickly he looked away was enough of a tell.
“Well, what do you know? We’re being watched,” I said.
“Or at least one of us is.”
That made more sense. “Any reason why it’s you?” I asked.
“Maybe,” she said. “What about you? Your past has a funny way of never letting go.”
“You’ve noticed that, huh?”
Elizabeth gave another look at the side view mirror on the Ford Escort. “He’s still there. What do you want to do?”
“Two options,” I said. “One, separate and see which of us he follows. That would be smart and sensible.”
“What’s the second option?”
“This,” I said.
CHAPTER 19
I immediately took off, sprinting straight at the guy. Screw smart and sensible. Sometimes you just have to go with expedient.
I thought he would run away. I was sure he would run away. Cue the action music from every cop show ever. This had street chase written all over it.
Only the guy didn’t budge. It wasn’t so much that he froze—more like he’d made a split-second decision. His odds were much better if he stood his ground. It stopped me dead in my tracks.
I pulled up ten feet in front of him and ignored how crazy I must have looked as I walked the rest of the way. I got up right in his grill. “Do I know you?” I asked.
He squinted, lowering his phone. “Excuse me?”
“Because you seem to know me,” I said.
“What are you talking about?”
I pointed at his phone. The screen was black. “One of the tricks of pretending you’re on a phone is to actually be on the phone.”
He turned to walk away but I stepped in front of him, blocking his path.
“Get lost, asshole,” he said.
“I would if it meant you’d stop following me.”
“Who says I’m following you?”
“Oh, so maybe I’m the lucky one,” said Elizabeth, with perfect timing, as she walked up to us.
“I’m not following you, either,” he said.
“Man, you’re really not good at this,” I said, shaking my head. “When she shows up you’re supposed to act as if this is the first time you’re seeing her. Who is this strange woman suddenly talking to me with this even stranger guy? That’s your play. Instead, you just admitted you’ve already seen both of us together. Total rookie mistake.”
“Listen, I don’t know who the hell either of you are, but—”
“Maybe this will help,” said Elizabeth. She did more than flash her badge. She all but shoved it in his face. “Now that we have that established, it’s really important from this moment on that you don’t bullshit us. Do you understand me?”
There was nothing outwardly menacing about the guy. He looked average. Actually, he looked a little less than average. A bit of a shlub. The before-photo in a diet plan ad. “I’m not following you,” he said, looking Elizabeth square in the eyes.
“Is that really supposed to make me feel better?”
I slouched in my seat. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe this was a mistake,” I said. “The more I think about it, it’s not as if I really can’t do this on my own.”
“Seriously? A psychology professor using reverse psychology?”
“Yeah. Is it working?”
“No, not even a little,” she said. “But remind me again how much von Oehson is donating to Harlem Legal House.”
“Two million dollars.”
Elizabeth nodded slowly. That was working much better for her. “Yeah. That’s a lot of money,” she said.
“Does that mean you’re in?”
“It means I haven’t said no yet.”
“So you’re a maybe.”
“It depends.”
“On what?”
“For instance, you still haven’t told me where we’re going. Where does this genius plan of yours begin?” she asked.
“Where else, but at the beginning. The day Carter von Oehson disappeared, so did his girlfriend for hire,” I said.
“You mean, the prostitute.”
“I was trying to be politically correct.”
“So says the man who just kidnapped me.”
“Fine. That’s where we’re going,” I said. “You and I are off to see a prostitute.”
“Great,” said Elizabeth. “My morning keeps getting better and better.”
CHAPTER 15
When we rolled up to the corner of East 65th Street and Third Avenue on the Upper East Side, it occurred to both of us that prostitute was perhaps not the right term after all. A gentleman’s escort seemed more accurate. An expensive one, at that.
There are apartment buildings in the city, and there are luxury apartment buildings. This was definitely the latter. Even the doorman’s suit was nicer than mine.
At the security desk, a guy in a guard’s uniform gave us a look that all but screamed retired cop. Elizabeth did with him what I couldn’t do. Flash a badge.
On the twenty-eighth floor we stepped out of the elevator and into a large foyer. A vase on the pedestal table in the center of the space held an arrangement of freshly cut flowers, mostly hyacinths. Their violet-blue color matched the vertical stripes of the wallpaper lining the hallway.
The address Julian had given me brought us to the last door on the right. A corner apartment. Again, I let Elizabeth lead the way. Not only did she have the badge, she had the better job title for the task at hand.
Within seconds of her knocking we heard footsteps approaching on the other side of the door. Elizabeth didn’t wait to be asked who we were.
“I’m agent Elizabeth Needham,” she said, before holding up her badge in front of the peephole. “Are you Paulina?”
“Yes,” came her voice.
“Could you please open the door? We need to speak with you.”
There was a pause. Pauses are fine. Just so long as they’re not followed by footsteps walking away from the door. Or, worse, running. Neither was the case. A dead bolt snapped, and like that we were standing in front of a tall and slender blonde wearing a pair of sweatpants and a white T-shirt. Her hair was pulled back, she had no makeup on, and the heavy-framed glasses she was wearing looked straight out of Revenge of the Nerds. Still, she was absolutely, positively stunning.
“Come in,” she said.
She had the Russian accent of someone who’d clearly been working over the years to get rid of it. Detectable, but only barely. She didn’t inquire who I was, which meant Elizabeth didn’t have to introduce me. Perfect.
I’d gone over the questioning back in the limo. I would never ask Elizabeth to follow a script, just her instincts, but there was one particular question I needed posed to Paulina Zernivik, and it had to come before any others.
“Have you heard from Carter von Oehson since his suicide?”
I watched carefully as Paulina processed the implications of what Elizabeth was asking her. I wasn’t so much waiting for the answer—at least not the one she’d put into words. I all but expected her to pretend she didn’t know who Carter was.
No, what mattered was the answer she’d give before even opening her mouth. The body language. The squint of recognition on hearing Carter’s name. A sudden tensing of the shoulders when the brain, in a fit of panic, tells her to lie. All the unmistakable signs that she was hiding something about Carter’s disappearance.
C’mon, Paulina, show me what you’ve got…
Only her eyes didn’t narrow. Her shoulders actually relaxed. Paulina Zernivik had nothing to reveal—except relief. The kind you can’t fake.
“Oh, thank God,” she said.
CHAPTER 16
One, she knew Carter. That was clear.
Two, she hadn’t heard from him since he disappeared. Also clear.
“He’s still alive, isn’t he? That’s what you’re saying,” she said. “He didn’t kill himself.”
“We hope he’s still alive. We don’t know for sure,” I said. “But, yes, there’s some evidence to suggest he didn’t die by suicide.”
Paulina nodded as if vindicated. “I knew it. I just knew it.”
“Which is why we’re here,” I said. “To talk about what else you might know.”
She tugged on her white T-shirt, her eyes darting back and forth at Elizabeth and me. “How did you find me?” she asked.
Well, you see, it’s quite simple. It turns out the National Security Agency’s global spy satellite network compiles more than one hundred petabytes of data every six months, more than the total data stored on all of Facebook’s servers, and the NSA has to offload it periodically to an undisclosed data center so the network doesn’t throttle itself. This network is the virtual equivalent of Fort Knox, using 256-bit encryption, but the transfer is only 64 bit because by that point the data is deemed innocuous with no national security implications and is essentially nothing more than Google Maps, albeit featuring a minute-by-minute rendering of every inch of the planet with the kind of clarity that goes well beyond what any map app could ever offer. For instance, the vehicle identification number on the black Range Rover HSE registered to your name and address, Paulina, that you’ve been driving to the von Oehson home in Darien, Connecticut (latitude and longitude N 41°3’4”, W 73°28’45”), for a hell of a lot of Tuesday afternoons. Of course, 64-bit encryption is nothing to sneeze at in terms of data security unless you happen to be one of the world’s foremost—if not the most—gifted hackers. God bless you, Julian.
That was a little lengthy for an explanation, so I tightened it up a smidge for Paulina. “We found you,” I said. “That’s all that matters.”
“You need to be straight with us about Carter von Oehson,” said Elizabeth. “You want to help us find him, don’t you? Bring him home safe?”
“I do. Believe me, I want to. But there are certain things I can’t tell you,” she said.
I took that as my cue to be blunt. “Like his paying you for sex?”
Elizabeth shot me a look that said, Jeez, you really do need my help, Professor Tactless. “What he means, Paulina, is that we don’t care about your profession,” she explained. “That’s not why we’re here.”
“You were possibly the last person to see Carter before he disappeared,” I said. “We need to know more about the time you spent with him this past Tuesday afternoon. Did he act any different or say anything strange, something you might have picked up on?”
“No,” said Paulina.
“No? Nothing at all?” I asked. “Take a minute to think it over. There had to have been something.”
She didn’t take a minute. She didn’t need one. “I wasn’t at his parents’ house last Tuesday. I wasn’t with him.”
“Where were you?” asked Elizabeth.
“I was here in my apartment.”
“Is that something you can prove?”
“I’m telling you,” said Paulina. “I wasn’t there.”
“And I’m asking you,” said Elizabeth. “Can you prove it?”
“What more do you want?” She balled her hands into fists, frustrated. Angry. “I wasn’t with him. It wasn’t me!”
I looked at Elizabeth. Elizabeth looked right back. Paulina looked at both of us, realizing what she’d just revealed. It wasn’t me.
“Shit,” she said.
CHAPTER 17
“If it wasn’t you at the house, then who was it?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” she lied. Her shoulders had tensed up so much her T-shirt looked as if it were on a hanger.
“Try again,” I said.
She started walking away. “I need to sit down.”
That was a good sign. People always sit for confession.
Paulina’s living room looked like a page out of the Restoration Hardware catalogue. There were big pillows on top of giant sofas, set off by a huge glass coffee table with assorted knickknacks arranged just so.
She sat. We all sat. Elizabeth and I said nothing. We only stared, waiting her out. Eventually Paulina started talking.
“I was supposed to be with Carter last Tuesday,” she said.
“What happened?” I asked.
“He canceled. Or at least I thought he did,” she said. “I got a text about two hours beforehand.” She beat us to the punch. “And, yes, I saved it.”
She reached for her cell in her sweatpants, bringing up the text. We knew she wasn’t about to hand over her phone, so Elizabeth and I got up to read it.
Betty it’s C. Friend’s
phone. Dropped smine,
shattered. Gotta get new
asap so need to cancel
today. Cool?
“Wait. Who’s Betty?” I asked, reading the text again.
“That’s the name I use with him,” she said. “I’m Betty.”
“Does he know your real name?” asked Elizabeth.
“It’s funny, every repeat client wants to know my real name at some point. They think it makes them different, like we have a real connection or something. Carter never asked me. Not once,” she said.
“Had he ever canceled on you before?” I asked.
She smiled slightly, as if I’d hit on something. “Never.”
I sat down again, but Elizabeth remained standing. She was pacing. She was hooked. “The excuse about his phone breaking sure made it convenient for someone else to have sent that text,” she said.
“Yes, but someone who also had to know who Betty was,” I said. I pointed at Paulina. “As well as your cell number and when you saw Carter each week.”
“That was another thing,” said Paulina. “Something else that had me thinking he actually did send the text. Carter never used his name. It was always just C when he texted me. Apparently a lot of the kids on campus call him C Money.”
“Subtle,” said Elizabeth.
“So maybe Carter sent the text, maybe he didn’t,” I said. “The question is, what did you do about it?”
“What do you mean?” asked Paulina.
“He canceled. Or at least I thought he did,” I said, repeating back what she’d first told us. “That means you had to have done something about it. You followed up in some way.”
Again, Elizabeth and I just stared at Paulina. “I drove out to Darien,” she said finally.
“I get it,” said Elizabeth. “You were suspicious. You thought maybe you were losing a good client.”
“Exactly,” she said.
“And?” asked Elizabeth.
“And I saw his BMW in the driveway when I got there. So I parked a little down the street from the house and waited. Then I saw her,” she said. “She pulled up in a red Jaguar, got out, and went inside.”
“Then what?” I asked.
Paulina shrugged. “Then I went home. What was I supposed to do? I mean, I thought about waiting and confronting him afterward, but that’s something a girlfriend would do. I wasn’t his girlfriend.”
“Did you at least get a good look at the other woman?” asked Elizabeth.
“She was tall. Long hair. Light brown, I think. Maybe not so light, I don’t know. That’s about it,” she said. “Oh, and she was wearing a black fur coat.”
“Any chance she works for the same person you work for?” I asked.
“I wouldn’t know.”
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t know who I work for,” she said.
Paulina—Betty, to Carter—was so matter-of-fact about it that I didn’t immediately react the way I was supposed to react. Utter disbelief. She doesn’t know who she works for?
“But even if I did know, I’d never tell you,” she continued. “You could arrest me, try to lock me up forever. I still wouldn’t tell you.”
“Why not?” I asked.
“Because they’d kill me, that’s why.”
CHAPTER 18
Elizabeth didn’t say a single word to me the entire way down in the elevator, nor while we walked back through the lobby of Paulina’s apartment building and out the revolving doors.
But I knew what was coming. This was the calm before the storm. Hurricane Lizzie. Sure enough, the moment we hit the sidewalk…
“What the hell was that?” she asked, throwing her arms up in the air. “I mean, for crying out loud, what the hell was it?”
“Can I explain?”
“No. I don’t want to hear it. I know what it’s going to be. You’re going to give me some fancy-pants explanation that sounds a lot smarter than it really is.”
“Did you really just say fancy pants?”
“Shut up, I’m serious,” she said. “You rope me into this thing and then you go ahead and do that. Why? Why did you let her off the hook?”
“That’s not what I did.”
“That’s exactly what you did. She would’ve told us more, and instead you just thanked her for her time.”
“That’s called keeping her on the hook. We’re going to need that girl’s help, which means we need her on our side, trusting us.”
“What’s with all this we stuff?” she said, air quotes around the we. “That was you in there, acting on your own. And as for me, I already told you I haven’t made up my mind yet on getting involved.”
I looked at her, my best sideways glare. Really? Don’t even pretend you’re not hooked, Lizzie. I saw you in there. This case is so in your wheelhouse.
Only she wasn’t looking back at me. I followed her eyeline. It was laser focused on the side view mirror of a Ford Escort parked along the curb. Something had caught her attention. “What is it?” I asked.
“My six,” she said. “Right shoulder. The guy on the phone.”
I glanced over her right shoulder, spotting the guy. “I see him,” I said. “What about him?”
“He’s talking on the phone, right?”
“Yeah?”
“So how come he’s not talking? He hasn’t said a word since we’ve been out here.”
I glanced again at the guy. He was standing about twenty yards away. Long brown overcoat, phone to his ear. Maybe he was just listening to whoever was on the other end of the line. That would explain why his lips weren’t moving. But it didn’t account for his eyes.
For a split second they locked on to mine. He didn’t flinch. He didn’t panic. But how quickly he looked away was enough of a tell.
“Well, what do you know? We’re being watched,” I said.
“Or at least one of us is.”
That made more sense. “Any reason why it’s you?” I asked.
“Maybe,” she said. “What about you? Your past has a funny way of never letting go.”
“You’ve noticed that, huh?”
Elizabeth gave another look at the side view mirror on the Ford Escort. “He’s still there. What do you want to do?”
“Two options,” I said. “One, separate and see which of us he follows. That would be smart and sensible.”
“What’s the second option?”
“This,” I said.
CHAPTER 19
I immediately took off, sprinting straight at the guy. Screw smart and sensible. Sometimes you just have to go with expedient.
I thought he would run away. I was sure he would run away. Cue the action music from every cop show ever. This had street chase written all over it.
Only the guy didn’t budge. It wasn’t so much that he froze—more like he’d made a split-second decision. His odds were much better if he stood his ground. It stopped me dead in my tracks.
I pulled up ten feet in front of him and ignored how crazy I must have looked as I walked the rest of the way. I got up right in his grill. “Do I know you?” I asked.
He squinted, lowering his phone. “Excuse me?”
“Because you seem to know me,” I said.
“What are you talking about?”
I pointed at his phone. The screen was black. “One of the tricks of pretending you’re on a phone is to actually be on the phone.”
He turned to walk away but I stepped in front of him, blocking his path.
“Get lost, asshole,” he said.
“I would if it meant you’d stop following me.”
“Who says I’m following you?”
“Oh, so maybe I’m the lucky one,” said Elizabeth, with perfect timing, as she walked up to us.
“I’m not following you, either,” he said.
“Man, you’re really not good at this,” I said, shaking my head. “When she shows up you’re supposed to act as if this is the first time you’re seeing her. Who is this strange woman suddenly talking to me with this even stranger guy? That’s your play. Instead, you just admitted you’ve already seen both of us together. Total rookie mistake.”
“Listen, I don’t know who the hell either of you are, but—”
“Maybe this will help,” said Elizabeth. She did more than flash her badge. She all but shoved it in his face. “Now that we have that established, it’s really important from this moment on that you don’t bullshit us. Do you understand me?”
There was nothing outwardly menacing about the guy. He looked average. Actually, he looked a little less than average. A bit of a shlub. The before-photo in a diet plan ad. “I’m not following you,” he said, looking Elizabeth square in the eyes.
